January 31, 2012

The Railway Club is a significant venue for all those involved in the creation of Blips and Ifs. Each of the Blips and Ifs producers performed on stage at the long standing Vancouver bar during one of CITR's Shindig festivals. The Railway to this day has a special association in the hearts of the crew, and indeed Vancouver itself. One of the more direct connections is the Blips and Ifs logo.

'The Boats' was studying design one day at school and there the words Blips and Ifs appeared on the side of the projected image on the screen before him. A section of text from a page next to the one his professor was intending on showing the class was peeking out from the corner of the screen. This was the birth of the name of the bloglabel.

Shortly after Blips and Ifs was named and online, and almost ready to begin posting it's 'superflat singles' 'The Boats' was at the Railway Club scribbling ideas and thumbnails of the logo, and quite plainly with a head full of typefaces and type design. A specially sized rectangle, sent italic, with some counters popped through the bottom (almost like a 'b') and finished off with a couple serifs and voila! A logo was born under the heavy influence of type. Not that type hasn't always been important to the group. Garamond was a very specific typeface chosen by 'Stabbington McChopper' for the bloglable due to it's associations with philosophical books.

As seen through the posting dates on the site the label slowed it's releases and eventually stopped production. Mainly due to other projects and the satisfaction of having released over 70 tracks over the 3 first years. The group felt the project had been successful and carried on, 'Stabbington McChopper' continued to work on the ongoing Cruft project and releasing a series of covers songs with images in the tradition of the superflat singles, but added that of posters, zines, and more to fill the mythology of what has become Cruftworld.

A few years later [710W3] was teaching a graphic course at BCIT and happened to mention the font based logo during a typeface lesson, and it sparked an idea in him that soon became evolved into a typeface based on the sites logo. Tbough it can be used by manipulating the letters around in illustrator, this is currently only a typeface and not a font.